Traditionally, during the use of a device for managing the display of a flight profile of an aircraft, a user, such as a pilot of the aircraft, has the possibility of selecting the display of the flight profile from among at least two display modes, in particular a tracking mode and a flight plan mode.
When the selected mode for the display of the flight profile is the tracking mode, a horizontal axis belonging to said horizontal plane is a straight line passing through the position of the aircraft and extending in a movement direction of the aircraft, or in a direction of extension of the fuselage of the aircraft, or in a direction of a weather radar, or in a specific direction designated by the user.
When the mode selected for the display of the flight profile is the flight plan mode, a horizontal axis is defined by following the segments of the flight plan (straight and curved).
Irrespective of the mode selected from among the tracking mode and the flight plan mode, the vertical reference axis is defined along the axis of the standard barometric or baro-corrected altitudes, corresponding to the QNH aeronautic code.
Known from document U.S. Pat. No. 5,997,901 is a flight management system comprising a display unit for displaying flight plan information inside a viewing zone on a display screen, in which the resolution of a vertical profile of the flight plan is automatically adjusted as a function of altitude information of the flight plan to be displayed. The resolution of the vertical scale is adjusted automatically such that it varies inversely with the maximum altitude of the flight trajectory to be displayed.
However, the higher the maximum altitude of the flight trajectory to be displayed is, the lower the resolution of the vertical scale is and the less legible the displayed vertical profile will be. A lower resolution indeed prevents observing certain details of the vertical profile. Such management of the display of the vertical profile of the flight plan is then not optimal.